Slanted Lines

 Well, then: you've seen them go sprawling often enough, skinning their palms, banging their elbows, making chimp grimaces so as not to cry: what of that?

And you have pounded the disks flat in the sand, with a palm or with a heel, while the sky considers every variant of steel, from the bright ripples there away just above the trees to the heavy tarnish above, and the lights drains away: is that supposed to tell us more?

Because the question, then, now, and probably always, was: how do I live? A question that you might think should arise only after "may I live?" and "may I choose my life?" but you would be -- not for the first time, forgive me, little light! -- you would be quite terribly mistaken, because the question comes up premature: botched and mottled, a monster, an awkwardness from its first day and ever after. It is the first question, and we ask it before any of its answers could possibly be of use to us. That's how we're made.

(And I would like to make clear, at this point, that I had nothing to do with the design of human beings. I take no responsibility, none.)

But it is obvious from the start that a life worth living would have music, dance, and singing in it, not just around the periphery, but at its heart. And not as packaged commodities for purchase, but as what we do ourselves with a whole heart; clumsy, lame, and hoarse as we might be. And it would come inevitably, twice a week: if we missed, there would come a knock at the door, and the maenads would drag us out to the dancing lawn. That's what happens in civilized countries. 

And it would have lovemaking, and the silence after, and the slow return of light. These things are obvious, aren't they? They don't need to be argued.

Most of life, now and always, will be made up of addressing the problems at hand. Life has two parts: addressing problems, and making beauty. In the intervals there is sleep, and the long dream; but we're not quite ready to discuss that.

Why should anyone listen to us, little light, when we don't yet know how to live? Why should our exhortations and denunciations be taken seriously? 

yellow

leaves have filled the pool

and some few float with their leafstalks

above the water line:

red diagonal strokes across

a lion-colored page

Venustas Ergo Venustas

I find the world much more difficult and obscure than most people do. I have friends to whom it seems obvious that a person belongs to herself: a statement which I find fascinating, bizarre and indefensible. But to them it is self-evident. I have friends for whom it is self-evident that there is a God who created people, and who believe that they therefore belong to Her: again fascinating, again bizarre, again indefensible. 

It's not clear to me that we exist, in any way similar to the way we imagine we exist, anyway: so Descartes' clear starting principle is for me the iffy conclusion of a dubious chain of assumptions. What are my responsibilities, even if I was created, even if by some unknowable fiat I not only exist, but belong to myself, even if "I" and "myself" are meaningful categories that can be meaningfully linked by a property relationship? That's not clear to me either. To me these are speculations in the outermost spheres of wild hypothesis. To my friends, they're daily realities worth killing and dying for.

Really. I'm not making this up, I'm not trying to invent difficulties. I'm just saying it's dark, to me: I stumble through an obscure world of shifting shapes and dissolving outlines, punctuated by moments of brilliant, wounding, transcendent beauty. 

Which vanish almost at once, leaving behind longings, traces, puzzlements. Descartes, bless his heart, was sure that he existed. For my part, I'm sure that the experience of beauty can exist, momentarily at least, however we conceive of the experiencer. And that's about as far as I get with first principles. This is why I'm so fun at parties.

Smudge

Mervyn Peak, study for Glassblowers

I suppose I should read up about beauty, and I suppose, having had that thought, I will; but at the moment I have thoughts whirling that I'd like to set down, unformed and uninformed as they are. I don't think I've ever read a satisfying or even intelligible definition of beauty, first of all. And second of all, I don't think I've read a philosopher who placed the experience of beauty at the heart of her understanding of What We Are Here For and What It's All About, which seems odd. Unless the capacity for perceiving beauty and the capacity for formulating philosophies are mutually destructive. That strikes me as facile and unlikely, the sort of thing that people say when they're looking for excuses to shirk. Probably though I am just ignorant.

I certainly have encountered this in fiction. Mervyn Peake bodies it forth, along with much that is beautiful, much that is puerile, much that is unfair. Those of us who do put beauty at the heart may not make terribly good advertisements for the beautiful life. We tend to screw up and to swerve off into the weeds.

An unsatisfactory welter of catch-phrases rises around me. Keats saying that truth is beauty: that's always irritated me. Truth is truth, beauty is beauty, what do they have to do with each other? Accuracy is beauty, maybe, or necessary to beauty, but that's different. The smudginess characteristic of people Trying To Be Artistic is maybe the Beautiful's version of original sin. You can smudge your way to Pretty, but not to Beautiful.

Begin when all the rest had left behind them
Headlong death in battle or at sea.

It is not accident, I am quite sure, that my first real hints of literary beauty came obliquely, in translation. You prepare yourself in the right ways, when you're picking up a translation. You know it's not the real thing, that you're going to have to open your eyes a little wider, that you're trying to see around a corner. (You always were able to see around corners, a friend said to me, the most flattering thing anyone has ever said to me. But I digress, unless I don't.)

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine. Have I not kept the vow?

 Well, no, not really. But I haven't forgotten it, either. I guess that will have to do.